


change of pace

by boopish



Series: Fic Battle [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Artist Sam Winchester, F/M, SPN Fic Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 20:45:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10647735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boopish/pseuds/boopish
Summary: “Stay still,” He commanded. He had said the words so often they seemed to have lost all meaning, and by the window Ruby only shifted across more. A childish sullenness was a permanent fixture on her face. Her brows sunk lower and lower with each passing moment. Sam only frowned back. “Hey, you said you wanted to see my art."





	change of pace

When she squirmed, the fourth time in almost as many minutes, Sam sighed heavily. His pencil stilled across the paper, the scratching of the shades falling silent. Art took concentration that she would not permit him. He shot her the most sour look he could muster.

“Stay still,” He commanded. He had said the words so often they seemed to have lost all meaning, and by the window Ruby only shifted across more. A childish sullenness was a permanent fixture on her face. Her brows sunk lower and lower with each passing moment. Sam only frowned back. “Hey, you said you wanted to see my art.”

“I didn’t think I’d be your model.” In fairness to her she tried to settle down but relaxation hardly looked natural for a woman such as her. Sam liked to capture his models in a state of serenity and she looked roughly as calm as a sheep among wolves. No matter what expression she settled on it looked strange on her face. Even from across the room Sam could see everything; the way her jaw tensed with every line he drew, how her eyes were as hard as polished stone. Inside he warred with himself, debating on drawing the truth of what he saw or to cover up her anxieties. Pointed, or vague. Natural, or flattering. But even if she gave him the cold shoulder for the rest of the night, he was a man of the truth - and so he thought of the coldness of the night outside when he drew her eyes, shading them just as dark as the velvet sky. It gave him a chill all the way down to his bones. “You know how I hate sitting around. You haven’t got anything else you can show me?”

“No,” Sam told her with careful honesty. He continued to shade, catching the long shadows cast by the bold glare of the neon signs outside. In secret he had plenty of pieces scattered around the motel room, stuffed into the many nooks and crannies of the Impala. There were tiny little doodles on the back of gas station receipts that had faces from close to ancient memories, Jo’s delighted face and shining eyes, napkins from restaurants that held Bobby’s pensive frown, blotted with navy ink and fraught with soft tears through the delicate tissue. There was even an old picture of Dean in easier days, worn and terrible, but he didn’t have the heart to show it to another. It was smoothed down and preserved as well as possible, sitting in the locked glove compartment of the Impala. It had not been moved since the day Sam couldn’t bear to remember. He could have shown Ruby any number of them, but a bitter mix of his pride, his pain and their low quality had him wincing at the thought- and it wasn’t like Sam didn’t have an ulterior motive. She had never shown interest in his art before, and he would take this opportunity with both hands. “And you know I want a drawing of you.”

“Dean didn’t have the ego to be sitting around for you all day?”

As much as it stung it forced a laugh from him. It rattled his chest painfully as if his body was surprised. God, Dean used to. In every hotel the moment he saw Sam with his sketchbook he would splay across the rickety beds, coo and call for Sam to draw him like one of his French girls, and Sam would smile even as the joke grew almost as old as the myths they hunted. There were a lot of motels, even more beds for Dean, and still the same old joke. Sam didn’t know what kept him grinning each time. Maybe it was the fact that despite everything there was always one thing that would stay the same, keep him sane, and that was Dean’s determination to see him smile.

But now it hurt more than Sam would ever put in words. It would always remain yet another thing he couldn’t share with Ruby, a little fractured piece of Dean he wanted to keep to himself.

Instead, he looked sternly at her and repeated, “I want a picture of you.”

“Why?” She asked, and her frustration was evident in every inch of her. If it was anyone else Sam might have let them escape his clutches- but he knew Ruby, intimately, and if she didn’t want to be drawn she would never had posed for him. It wasn’t that she was a perfect model. It was quite the opposite. Her long limbs were tense and she was as flighty as the day he met her, but Sam had never been offered the chance to draw someone quite so uniquely beautiful in what felt like forever. He wasn’t going to squander this rare opportunity.

“Want me to be honest with you?” He said, and he flitted his hand over the curls of her hair. A mess, as always.

“If at all possible,” She said, voice as dry as bleached bone, and Sam almost smiled.

“I want something to remember you by,” He admitted, and he hadn’t meant for his tone to be so very soft. They were sitting in an almost unnatural quiet, completely alone with the doors and windows all shut. There were no neighbours, the sign displaying many vacancies. Cars occasionally drifted by on silent streets. It was late. They should have been sleeping, should have been researching. There were a lot of things that Sam should have been doing. Drawing and baring his soul was right at the bottom of his considerable list. “We both know how much you like to disappear.”

Ruby’s jaw flexed. Her lips pursed but no angry words came. Sam moved down the soft line of her mouth, light against the paper, and changed to harder strokes as he thickened the curve of her pale throat. He had finished his work quite some time ago, long having perfected the minor details of his own shirt she had plucked from the floor. His precious time was spent going over all of the creases of the day and the lipstick she had left high on the collar that evening.

Irrelevant details, all of them, but once he was done that was it for the night, and there was a nasty delicate feeling in him that told him he didn’t want to let her go.

Halfway through the cold night, halfway to dawn’s bold return and then she might be gone again in the sunlight.

He sketched faint lines over what was already stark. He darkened the lines that stood out most to him, the angular lines of her body and the edges of his clothes. He paid special attention to the bruise he had eagerly left on her throat, a clear patch of dark blue that stood out sharply against her skin even in the absence of light. For even longer he stretched out their moment, scolding her whenever the woman so much as breathed too deeply, but eventually not even Sam could drag out their peaceful hours without seemingly pathetically desperate. Ruby knew the look of a desperate man all too well.

Glancing up had him meeting her eyes. They gleamed, like sunlight through whiskey, sickly sweet syrup. “It’s done,” He said, immediately catching the subtle way Ruby’s eyes softened in relief. She didn’t relax. Sam was confident that he would violently wake from a dream if she ever truly relaxed, but she sat easier when Sam put his pencil to one side. Her legs splayed out and her back stretched, letting her tension shift.

He let out a breath, and took the pad carefully. It wouldn’t do to have the paper creased. He offered it out to her with all the bravery he could claw to the surface, forced a carefree smile. “My lady,” He announced with a comical wave of his hands. It didn’t make her smile like he hoped. “The world can breathe a sigh of relief that I didn’t become an artist.”

Ruby stared at him for a heartbeat that caused a quiver of nervousness. Too many times did she seem to be reading all the things he tried to hide. When she finally accepted he felt no better. She took it gingerly, chipped nails scratching, and he knew he would never dislodge the heavy stones that sat in his gut like chunks of thick ice. Nausea that had been slowly building the whole night rose to the surface.  _ God, like it, please like it, _ and his breath caught high in his chest when he saw her appraisal.

After a moment that seemed to last a lifetime, a smile came like the first touch of the sun on her face, and Sam’s heart ached.

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of a fic battle with rougesparrow. I haven't written for or watched SPN in forever so. pls forgive.


End file.
